A Real Bastard
by Traviosita9124
Summary: In which we find Poppa Shannon, Faber is reprimanded and Mary and Marshall get busy on the island in her kitchen. M for a reason; please, read and review. One Shot.


Just a little idea that came to me one day…

Post "A Priest Walks into a Bar", and my way of fixing a bad situation without mucking up canon too badly. I hope you enjoy. Also, this is most likely my last piece for quite a while on this site. School starts on the 23rd, and with the amount of money I'm paying to learn to think like a lawyer, there won't be much time for fun writing. So, enjoy this last bit, and as always, please read and review; it does an author's heart good.

-Katie

* * *

The fantasy imploded two weeks into an eight week vacation.

All it had taken was an overheard phone conversation. Mary replayed it in her mind as she wheeled her bag through Albuquerque International Sunport and on toward long term parking.

She had just come in from the hot tub as Faber was finishing up on his cell phone. Although she never made it a habit to eavesdrop, her ears had caught the words "James Shannon" fall from his lips and she found herself entranced. When the words "most likely still in contact with Inspector Shannon" had joined them, though, her mind was made up.

In an impressive display of self-control, Mary waited for him to finish before informing him that she was leaving the resort and cancelling the remaining portion of her reservation. To his credit, Faber didn't bother to feign ignorance as to what would cause her sudden change of heart; he instead packed his things quickly and was out before dinner.

She celebrated his departure by spending the evening with Enrique.

Mary ended her musings as she reached her Mustang. Usually she relied on Marshall to ferry her to and from the airport; however, she was thankful that she had dissuaded him this time. She wanted time to contemplate where to go from here. The FBI still had feelers out, looking for her father, despite their declaration that he was officially dead; she was going to do her damnedest to find out what they knew.

For the moment, though, all she wanted was to go home, take a shower and crawl into bed.

* * *

Mary waited three days before letting Marshall know she was back in town.

After his initial shock that she was back in the country, she quickly filled him in on what she had overheard. Mary was surprised at his initial reluctance given how eager he had been for her to actively search out her father. While she told him what had happened in Mexico and what she had overheard, Marshall seemed aloof, cold to her.

She couldn't help but notice a change in his tone when she told him she had kicked Faber to the curb and come home.

He was at her door an hour later with a large sausage, green pepper and onion pizza and a six pack of beer.

* * *

It was two weeks of evenings spent on her couch investigating while they ate take out, TV blaring in the background, before they could put together a coherent picture.

At the time Mary had been abducted by Spanky and O'Conner had shown up, the FBI had been ready to close the file on James Shannon. However, with the investigation into the Shannon women, a few select members of the FBI upper brass decided to quietly keep the file open; it gave O'Conner a reason to stick around and the probe into Brandi as a meth dealing conspirator served as a low-key way for them to attempt to trace their real target.

Mary had accidentally given them additional direction by requesting that Eleanor ask after a tall, blonde agent named Lauren in New Jersey.

Guessing that he was still there, the local field office sent out feelers; James, doing what he did best, abandoned another family and ran. He was believed to have headed west to contacts in the Denver area. The case fell into Faber's lap thanks to his father's pull in Washington. He had taken up with Mary as a way to keep tabs on her communication with her father; given his real objective, FBI administrators looked the other way when he began to deliberately funnel his witnesses to Albuquerque.

Mary felt used; used and angry.

* * *

The Friday before she was due back at work, Marshall took Mary out to dinner at her favorite Mexican restaurant. He had tamales, she had a chimichanga and they split a small pitcher of strawberry margaritas. The conversation flew back and forth across the table; by the end of the meal they had decided to quietly begin a search for Mary's father. The idea of finding her old man had long ago gone from a fantasy family reunion to the opportunity to finally get some answers for his behavior. She sank into angry thoughts as to how she would confront daddy dearest when they found him; Marshall paid the bill and ushered her out of the restaurant and to his waiting truck.

Mary stewed even as he drove her home, taking comfort in the familiar feeling of being livid with her father. By the time Marshall had pulled into her driveway and killed the engine, Mary felt ready to explode.

Explode she did when Marshall offered her a hand out of the truck.

"I'm not a fucking invalid. I can get out on my own."

Her partner's usually humorous baby blues darkened as he rolled his eyes, gave an angry grunt and slammed the truck door before following her up her walk. She rounded on him as he stepped on to the porch behind her.

"I can't let myself in the house now? What, Marshall, am I too drunk to handle keys?" She knew she was taking it a step too far, he hadn't done anything wrong, but she jangled the keys in his face anyway before jamming her house key into the lock. Even the tumblers turning into place sounded angry, frustrating her further and leading her to slam the door into the wall as she made her way into the kitchen.

Marshall, to her further annoyance, had followed her in, shutting and locking the door behind him. The look on his face was one she hadn't really seen all that often: he was royally pissed at her. Beneath her anger, Mary felt her adrenaline begin to pump. She wanted to fight, and Marshall was going to oblige her.

"Marshall—"

Before she knew what was happening, he was in her face, backing her deeper into the kitchen.

"No, Mary, enough of this bullshit. I'm sick of being your whipping boy."

She scoffed at him. "Whipping boy?" she leveled him with a glare, hands on her hips and anger curling her upper lip. "If you didn't want to face the shit storm, Marshall, then you should have cleared out and gone to that damn security company. Not like I haven't had a man walk out before! I was fine before you and I would be fine after you."

"Oh, yes, let's beat that dead horse again!" he shouted as he stalked towards her. Mary took three steps back and promptly found herself pressed against the kitchen island. Marshall pinned her there, his arms holding her in place on either side of her and his hands planted flat on the countertop. He lowered his face to hers and his voice took on a rough tone.

"You have daddy issues, Mare. It's played a factor in your relationships with Raph, Faber, Stan and myself. Whether it's using Stan as a father figure, or purposely picking men that can't live up to your standards and having your relationships become failing, self-fulfilling prophecies, you've allowed it to cloud your life. It's why you're so damn angry all the time and even I can't get you to lay it down and ease your burden. You might be fine if I walked out, Mare, but you wouldn't be good. You're good when you and I are firing on all cylinders. We haven't been good since you let yourself get hoodwinked into that sham of an engagement." She gave a huff of indignation; Marshall lowered his face so his nose brushed hers and his breath danced across her mouth. "What, Mare, no response? Am I telling the truth or not?"

Mary felt heat flare in her belly and pool in her groin as her nipples tightened as his gruff tone of voice washed over her, promising wonderfully dark things. While she would deny it to the world, she had long been attracted to her partner. He was not classically handsome: his features were too sharp, he was practically a professional nerd, but he irrefutably pushed her buttons in all the right ways. He was smart, funny, reliable and a badass when it mattered most. She always found it hot when his voice dropped an octave as he roughed up a suspect. Hell, she had nearly creamed her panties when he slammed that one assailant into a pillar while they were rescuing Fr. Gabe.

Nonetheless, like the self-fulfilling prophecy they both knew her to be, she had run off to Mexico with Faber instead of going to the one reliable man in her life. She wanted to stop being angry, stop fighting, but she was too worked up; she felt anger, frustration and lust grind her gut as her hazel eyes glared into his blue ones.

"You can be a real bastard sometimes, Marshall," she growled at him, daring him to do something, anything. He gave a small, joyless chuckle.

"I'm not, Mare. If I was a real bastard, I would have done this a long time ago," he replied, his eyes locked on her lips. Before she realized what he was planning on doing, Marshall had his mouth on hers.

Mary felt her heart drop into her stomach and spring back into her chest; she felt breathless, weightless and was beginning to feel dizzy just as his tongue swept across her lower lip. She groaned as she permitted him access. He kissed her with bruising force as he pushed her further into the counter; her arms came up of their own volition and her hands clamped to his biceps. She was keenly aware of his hands working their way under her top; they were two points of fire curled around her hips and headed to her waist. By the time his thumbs found their way to the undersides of her breasts, Mary had already stripped off her own tank and was working on his button down.

Mary being Mary, she lost patience and ripped it off of him by the time she hit the second button. The feeling of the cloth separating on his body, along with the pinging sounds of the button strikes all over her kitchen, pulled Marshall's attention away from his ministrations to her breasts.

"Am I a bastard now, Mare?" he queried. She could feel his smile as his hand knotted in her hair, forcing her head back as his mouth worked at the tendons in her neck. She couldn't recall how, but she was sitting on her counter, nude from the waist up, jeans undone and boots kicked off. She stopped to admire the newly-forming welts she had left on his chest; a wave of possessiveness overcame her, twisting up with the lust and pushing out the remnants of anger.

"The only way I'll truly consider you a bastard," she admitted with a gasp as he nibbled at a nipple, "is if you stop doing that."

He pushed her further back, leaving her propped on her elbows as he moved down her body to dip his fingers beneath the waist of her jeans. Mary lifted her hips to help as he skimmed the denim down her legs, along with her panties to leave her absolutely bare before him. Using her feet, she urged Marshall to get out of his own pants and then drew him in with her legs.

They both gasped when his cock nudged her smooth, slick folds. He kissed her again, passion high. She fed off his wildness, returning each nip, suckling and thrust of the tongue as he snaked a hand down between them to toy with her clit. Mary gave a small shriek when he pinched her clit, and gladly returned his impish smile as he leaned over her.

"Mare, I don't think I can hold out…" he confessed, looking a bit embarrassed. She could feel him throbbing against her and felt herself grow even wetter. Pushing herself up, Mary wrapped her arms around his neck as she scooted closer to the edge of the granite top to kiss him.

"Don't hold out, Marshall. Go as hard as you can; we can do slow later."

Mary couldn't help the shit-eating grin that spread across her face when he realized the implication. He slid his hands beneath her ass and angled her hips to match what he needed before pushing forward. Mary's nails dug into his shoulders as her inner muscles stretched to their limit to accommodate his large size. She relished in the pleasurable shudder that raced through his body as he sank all the way home. Here, wrapped around him, he was a study in contradictions: she had never seen a man appear so strong while wearing an expression so vulnerable. The granite dug into her ass as she flex her hips in an attempt to get him to move, her lips playing across his jaw.

Smart boy that he was, Marshall didn't need to be encouraged twice. He set a hard pace, babbling in to her neck all the while.

"I want you on every surface of this place, every room. I want to feel you around me I want to be inside of you for the rest of my life. I don't want you to ever look at another man again, and I swear, as soon as I get the chance, I'm spending a night with my head between your legs. Forget just a night; a night, a day, hell, a weekend spent making you scream. You may as well throw out your clothes; you won't be needing them."

He punctuated his speech by biting down on the sensitive skin of her throat as he pressed hard on that magical bundle of nerves between her legs. Mary felt herself shatter around him, tethered to earth only by the sharp feeling of his mouth on her and the sensation of him releasing deep inside of her. Time seemed to stop before Marshall gathered his wits and gave a few more shallow thrusts before slipping out of her. Without speaking, he moved his hands from her ass to her hips as he helped her hop down off of the counter; Mary couldn't help nuzzling into his chest and placing a tender kiss on his breast bone. Her hips were achy, but she revealed in the shaky feeling.

"So, Marshall," she wheedled, taking his hand in hers as she lead them to her bedroom, both naked as the day they were born. "About that weekend between my legs…"

* * *

A month after her forced vacation had ended, they found James Shannon.

As expected, he had been hiding in Sedalia, Colorado, a town with a population just over 200 to the southwest of Denver. The U.S.M.S team from Albuquerque went in quietly without alerting any other federal agencies and extracted him. The first the FBI heard of his arrest was when a team of Marshals dropped him off at the lobby of the New Jersey field office. Mike Faber didn't hear a word about it until three days after the fact; once his boss had stopped yelling about how he had been played by "that blonde from Albuquerque" he packed his things and was shipped to the Hoover Building with his tail between his legs.

During the transfer, Mary introduced herself as Marshal Shepard; James was not a stupid man and easily recognized his oldest daughter. He was also astute enough to know that it was her way of letting him go while expressing her displeasure, and that he would most likely end up with a bullet between his eyes if he even dreamed of passing off an insincere apology about running out on her.

They rode from Sedalia to Denver in silence. She didn't say anything beyond, "Good luck" when she and her lean partner handed him off to the next pair that would be responsible for him.

As she watched him go, she leaned the slightest amount into Marshall and muttered under her breath, "There goes a real bastard…"

* * *

Fin.


End file.
